blood-dishes-msg

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blood-dishes-msg - 1/20/08

Use of blood in period foods. Recipes.

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NOTICE -

This file is a collection of various messages having a common theme that I have collected from my reading of the various computer networks. Some messages date back to 1989, some may be as recent as yesterday.

This file is part of a collection of files called Stefan's Florilegium. These files are available on the Internet at: http://www.florilegium.org

I have done a limited amount of editing. Messages having to do with separate topics were sometimes split into different files and sometimes extraneous information was removed. For instance, the message IDs were removed to save space and remove clutter.

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Stefan at florilegium.org

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Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 15:59:12 -0400

From: renfrow at skylands.net (Cindy Renfrow)

Subject: Re: SC - Organ Meats

>While perusing my brand-new copy of The Medieval Kitchen I noticed a number of

>recipes where the sauce was thickened with liver.

>Has anyone tried this? How pervasive is the liver flavor? (Other organ meats

>are great, but I just don't like liver.) Is there any way to omit the liver

>and still get a reasonable result?

>Renata

Hello! The flavor depends on what kind of liver you use & the proportion

to other ingredients. Another period method of thickening sauces is using

boiled blood: boil it till it coagulates, and (sometimes you then fry it,

and then) pass it through a strainer. Then add the blood to your sauce.

Cindy/Sincgiefu

renfrow at skylands.net

Date: Wed, 29 Dec 1999 10:47:48 -0500 (EST)

From: Robin Carrollmann <harper at idt.net>

Subject: Re: SC - Christmas Dinner and Gifts

On Wed, 29 Dec 1999, Lurking Girl wrote:

> Vaguely related: does anyone have a

> suggestion on what to do with ~1 cup of goose blood? It's gotta be

> good for something.

Disclaimer: I have never cooked a goose or any component thereof, and I am

far from my cookbooks right now. However, a web search turned up a few

things. Two are period German recipes, though they will do you no good

right now unless you still have the giblets of the goose:

http://www.best.com/~ddfr/Medieval/Cookbooks/Sabrina_Welserin.html

(recipes # 10 & 16)

Another is for a Polish soup made with goose blood:

http://www.acc.umu.se/~effie/rec.food.recipes/polish/czernina

Ooops... just noticed that it calls for broth made from the goose

gizzards, plus the gizzards themselves. Maybe you could substitute duck

innards?

Brighid ni Chiarain

Date: Wed, 29 Dec 1999 21:44:00 EST

From: LrdRas at aol.com

Subject: SC - Blood

parlei at algonet.se writes:

<< Vaguely related: does anyone have a

> suggestion on what to do with ~1 cup of goose blood? It's gotta be

> good for something. >>

I posted this recipe a while back. I redacted it for the Weekend of Wisdom

feast, It was a huge success. The sauce is thickened with blood.

GEORG… BRUET (Parsley-laced Soup)

This dish was very well received with only one piece of chicken being uneaten

by a vegetarian. I had thought that the liver and blood might be a problem

but no one commented prior to service and there were only good things said

about the dish after service.

(from Le Manegier de Paris. Translation by Janet Hinson)

Makes 8 servings.

ORIGINAL RECIPE: George Soup, Parsley-laced Soup. Take poultry cut into

quarters, veal, or whatever meat you wish cut into pieces, and put to boil

with bacon; and to one side have a pot, with, blood, finely minced onions

which you should cook or fry in it. Have also bread browned on the grill,

then moisten it with stock from your meat and wine, then grind ginger,

cinnamon, long pepper, saffron, clove and grain and the livers, and grind

them up so well that there is no need to sift them: and moisten with

verjuice, wine and vinegar. And when the spices are removed from the mortar,

grind your bread, and mix with what it was moistened with, and put it through

the sieve, and add spices and leafy parsley if you wish, all boiled with the

blood and the onions, and then fry your meat. And this soup should be brown

as blood and thick like 'soringe.'

Note that always you must grind the spices first; and with soups, you do not

sift the spices, and afterwards you grind and sieve the bread.

Note that this is only called parsley-laced soup when parsley is used, for as

one speaks of 'fringed with saffron,' in the same way one speaks of 'laced

with parsley'; and this is the manner in which cooks talk.

8 Chicken quarters

4 slices Bacon, diced

2 Chicken livers

2 Onions, finely minced

1 T. Cooking fat (e.g., lard)

1/2 cp. Blood

1 slice Bread, toasted dark

1/2 cp. Chicken stock

1/4 cp. Red Wine

1/4 tsp. Long pepper, ground

1/2 tsp. True cinnamon, ground

1/8 tsp. Cloves, ground

1 pinch Saffron, ground

1/4 tsp. Grains of Paradise, ground

1 T Verjuice

1 T Red wine

1 T Wine Vinegar

1/4 cp. Italian parsley (leaves only)

1/4 tsp. Black pepper, ground

1/4 cp. Lard

In a large pot, cover chicken and bacon with water. Bring to a boil. Reduce

heat to medium. Cook until chicken is tender but not falling apart or until

flesh turns white. Remove chicken from stock. Continue boiling the stock

until it is reduced by half.

In another pot, sautÈ onions in fat until transparent and tender. Whisk in

blood. Continue cooking on low.

Mash liver and put through a sieve.

Mash parsley.

Moisten bread in * cp. of stock and * cp. red wine.

Moisten long pepper, cinnamon, cloves, saffron, grains of paradise and black

pepper in 1 T red wine, verjuice and vinegar.

Mash bread mixture and force through a strainer.

Mix liver into onion mixture. Mix blood into liver mixture, stirring

continuously. Add parsley. Mix in bread mixture and spice mixture. Simmer,

stirring continuously for 5 min.

Brown chicken in lard.

Serve chicken with sauce poured over top.

Ras

Date: Fri, 12 May 2000 08:44:25 +0200

From: "Cindy M. Renfrow" <cindy at thousandeggs.com>

Subject: SC - blood

<snip>

>Uh, ok, in Indonesia and the Philippines blood is often collected

>from animals when they are slaughtered and included in the cooking

>of>>certain >dishes, for example, in Pilipino dinaguan and Batak saksang.

>Do we have many European recipes from "SCA period" that include blood

>as an ingredient in dishes besides "blood sausage"?

>Anahita

Hello! Yes, there are some, such as this one for Fylettys en Galentyne.

Blood (fried or collected as pan drippings) was also used as a coloring

agent to make dishes dark in color.

Harleian MS. 279 - Potage Dyvers

xvj. Fylettys en Galentyne. Take fayre porke, [th]e fore quarter, an take

of [th]e skyne; an put [th]e porke on a fayre spete, an rost it half y-now;

[th]an take it of, an smyte it in fayre pecys, & caste it on a fayre potte;

[th]an take oynonys, and schrede hem, an pele hem (an pyle hem nowt to

smale), an frye in a panne of fayre grece; [th]an caste hem in [th]e potte

to [th]e porke; [th]an take gode broth of moton or of beef, an caste

[th]er-to, an [th]an caste [th]er-to pouder pepyr, canel, clowys, an macys,

an let hem boyle wyl to-gederys; [th]an tak fayre brede, an vynegre, an

stepe [th]e brede with [th]e same brothe, an strayne it on blode, with ale,

or ellys sawnderys, and salt, an lat hym boyle y-now, an serue it forth.

Rose (Liber Cure Cocorum, p. 13.)

Take flour of ryse, as whyte as sylke, And hit welle, with almond mylke;

Boyle hit tyl hit be chargyd, [th]enne Take braune of capone or elle of henne;

Loke [th]ou grynd hit wondur smalle, And sithen [th]ou charge hit with alle;

Coloure with alkenet, sawnder, or ellys with blode, Fors hit with clowes

or macys gode; Seson hit with sugur grete plent», [th]is is a rose, as

kokes tell me.

[Take flour of rice, as white as silk,

And heat it well, with almond milk;

Boil it till it is thick, then

Take flesh of capon or else of hen;

Look that you grind it very small,

And then you thicken it with all;

Color with alkanet, saunders, or else

With blood, Season it with cloves or maces good; Season it with sugar in

great plenty, this is a rose, as cooks tell me.]

Cindy Renfrow

Author and Publisher of "Take a Thousand Eggs or More" and "A Sip Through Time"

http://www.thousandeggs.com

Date: Sat, 13 May 2000 07:04:18 -0400

From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>

Subject: Re: SC - blood from slaughter houses (was OT Vegetarian Vampires (was Absint...

Etain1263 at aol.com wrote:

> What I want to know is this: how do they keep the stuff from clotting? And

> when they freeze it...doesn't it hemolyze all of the rbcs?

> Etain

I'm not sure, although I'm sure it's possible to keep it from clotting.

One partially effective method from period involves the use of a bit of

vinegar to reduce clotting. You'll still probably get some but they can

be strained out.

Adamantius

Date: Sat, 13 May 2000 11:16:43 EDT

From: LrdRas at aol.com

Subject: Re: SC - blood from slaughter houses (was OT Vegetarian Vampires (was Absint...

Etain1263 at aol.com writes:

<< how do they keep the stuff from clotting? >>

The clot is the part that gets roasted or is used as thickening. Clotting is

a good thing. :-)

Ras

Date: Sun, 14 May 2000 01:15:50 -0000

From: "=?iso-8859-1?Q?Nanna_R=F6gnvaldard=F3ttir?=" <nannar at isholf.is>

Subject: Re: SC - blood from slaughter houses (was OT Vegetarian Vampires (was Absint...

Etain1263 at aol.com wrote:

> What I want to know is this: how do they keep the stuff from clotting?

You stir it while it is cooling down, then it doesnπt clot.

In my teens I once worked in a slaughterhouse for a couple of weeks. There

was an old woman there whose sole job was to stir the blood with a large

wooden stick. She got sick one day and none of us girls wanted to take her

job -not because we had any aversions to handling blood, but it was

definitely the most boring job in the house.

Nanna

Date: Mon, 15 May 2000 23:14:27 -0600

From: Jeanne Schweiger <jeannes1401 at juno.com>

Subject: SC - Artemisian Champion comments and blood soup recipe

Greetings from Casamira Jawjalny, O.L.

from Loch Salann, Artemisia

At this weekend's Artemisian A&S competition I entered Polish Black

Soup - Czarnina - made with blood. The Loch Salann Cook's Guild was

given the "opportunity" to slaughter 3 geese, and I saved the blood just

to make Czarnina.

I had eaten Czarnina as a kid, but didn't ever think I'd make it. The

recipe I have is the family recipe from 1895. I didn't find an original

recipe. It wasn't in any of my resources, although in "Food and Drink in

Medieval Poland - Rediscovering a Cuisine of the Past"

Maria Dembinska refers to it as being made in period.

If anyone wants the recipe, I'll send it privately.

Casamira

Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2000 15:14:19 -0400

From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>

Subject: Re: SC - Celtic recipes

pat fee wrote:

> On this topic. A friend just returned from Irland and was discribing the

> food she encountered. She said that they offered "blood pudding," both dark

> and white, and some other kind of saussage. Is ther a recipe for these or

> any documentation for our period. I thought it might not have changed much.

> I want to do this for part of a "breakfast" for a up coming estates meeting

> for another group.

There's a recipe for boudins noir or blood sausages in Le Menagier de

Paris, but it's more like a modern French recipe, as I recall, without

any cereal filler/stabilizer. Gervase Markham's "The English Housewife"

(1615 C.E.) contains recipes for black and white puddings, as does

Kenelm Digby's Closet Opened (1669 C.E.), which are closer to modern

black puddings found in the British Isles, usually with a starchy

product like rice or breadcrumbs in the mix.

White puddings don't contain blood, by the way, they just contain

everything else black puddings do, with the _exception_ of blood.

Adamantius

Date: Sun, 29 Oct 2000 17:12:00 +0100 (MET)

From: UlfR <parlei-sc at algonet.se>

Subject: SC - Malaches (FoC 159)

Malaches (Forme of Cury)

159 Malaches. Take blode of swyne, floure, & larde idysed, salt & mele;

do hit togedre. Bake hyt in a trappe wyt wyte gres.

8 dl pigs blood

3-4 dl flour (mixed wheat and rye)

75 g butter (I was out of lard)

salt

I mixed the blood, the flour, salt, and most of the butter (diced). I

poured it into a greased deep tin in an 200 C oven, for 75 minutes, with

a foil cover. By that time a knife point came out fairly clean, and the

internal temperature was 75 C.

The result is slightly dry, bland but not bad at all. I suspect that if

I used some fat source that did not "go into solution" completely the

dryness might be solved. Alteantively I could melt the butter before

mixing it in, but That Is Not Supported By The Original Recipie, so I

couldn't do that.

Those better at middle english than me can probably answer the question

of if it would have been better to make a pie crust.

Looking at a modern cookbook for black-pudding I see that the recipe has

changed, but the FoC version is clearly an ancestor. It was much less

dense than what is sold as black pudding in Sweden today; it was more

like a soft cake than anything else. It also tended to burn to the

sides of the tin (the modern recipie uses a water bath).

For lunch tomorrow I'll fry some up (in slices), not supported by the

recipie either, but that is SOP with black pudding nowadays.

Who was it that needed black food? This is it... you can even tell them

what it is made of and _still_ get a reaction. Or make it in muffin tins

for Halloween.

/UlfR

P.S. 1 dl = 1/10 litre (3-4 dl is thus 1.5 cups or so)

200 C is pretty close to 400 F

75 g is 2.5 oz

- --

Par Leijonhufvud parlei at algonet.se

Date: Sun, 29 Oct 2000 20:35:36 -0500

From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>

Subject: Re: SC - Malaches (FoC 159)

UlfR wrote:

> Malaches (Forme of Cury)

> 159 Malaches. Take blode of swyne, floure, & larde idysed, salt & mele;

> do hit togedre. Bake hyt in a trappe wyt wyte gres.

> 8 dl pigs blood

> 3-4 dl flour (mixed wheat and rye)

> 75 g butter (I was out of lard)

> salt

> I mixed the blood, the flour, salt, and most of the butter (diced). I

> poured it into a greased deep tin in an 200 C oven, for 75 minutes, with

> a foil cover. By that time a knife point came out fairly clean, and the

> internal temperature was 75 C.

> The result is slightly dry, bland but not bad at all. I suspect that if

> I used some fat source that did not "go into solution" completely the

> dryness might be solved. Alteantively I could melt the butter before

> mixing it in, but That Is Not Supported By The Original Recipie, so I

> couldn't do that.

Note that two fat sources are mentioned in the recipe, and this could be

a source of confusion, and not including both of them could be the

source of your dryness (that and a native Scandinavian wit...). It calls

for lard, for which a decent substitute is bacon or fresh pork belly or

back fat, even soaked salt fatback, and then white grease, for which a

good substitute or source is lard ; ) . The former is to enrich the

finished food and moisten it in the mouth as well as in cooking; it

melts as it cooks, like the fat in a sausage, but the fatty tissue

remains after cooking. The latter is a shortening, whose purpose is to

lighten the texture of the curdled blood, like the olive oil or butter

you sometimes stir into polenta. It keeps it smooth and soft.

> Those better at middle english than me can probably answer the question

> of if it would have been better to make a pie crust.

Well, rather than ask why you changed the recipe (egads!), I can say

that the dish is probably better cooked in a pie crust, or perhaps baked

in a bain-marie, literally a "blood pudding"... the texture is smoother

and presumably moister. Plus, you get to inflict it on people who aren't

expecting it ; ). "What's this? More weird food? No? Only pie? Thank

goodness! About time!"

> Looking at a modern cookbook for black-pudding I see that the recipe has

> changed, but the FoC version is clearly an ancestor. It was much less

> dense than what is sold as black pudding in Sweden today; it was more

> like a soft cake than anything else. It also tended to burn to the

> sides of the tin (the modern recipie uses a water bath).

Oh, definitely, just as fronchemoyle seems to be an ancestor of the

white pudding. And then, of course, there are "white malaches" without

blood... I'd say the modern recipe I'm familiar with hasn't changed

hugely, at least not the UK-type or French types I've seen. The most

obvious changes seem to me to be that you'd be using fresh soft bread

crumbs instead of flour, and that this recipe doesn't seem to call for

any spices. Pepper, cloves, and perhaps nutmeg would be a great asset

here. But then, of course, we don't want to deliberately change recipes

to meet expectations ; ).

> For lunch tomorrow I'll fry some up (in slices), not supported by the

> recipie either, but that is SOP with black pudding nowadays.

Hmmm. This poses an interesting question, one which may even deserve its

own thread and/or new subject header. Here goes:

How many documented, primary-source recipes can you (the collective you)

think of that specifically address the question of leftovers, or even

dishes that are based on other, previously cooked dishes? For example,

there's a recipe in Le Menagier that speaks of taking cold beef and

(IIRC) reheating it in slices with a sauce of vinegar and chopped

parsley (again, I _think_ that's what it says), and this is supposed to

be good for serving unexpected guests for a quick supper: as in, when

somebody bangs on your door in the middle of the night and you don't

want to simply send them away. How many examples of this kind of

recycled food strategy can people think of? It might go a ways toward

explaining the attitudes of medieval people toward leftovers, which

might explain why there aren't any instructions for reheating malaches.

On the other hand, if this is a feast dish, it may be one of those

things that got given to the poor as alms. Mmmmmm! Malaches!

Adamantius

From: "Weems, Lora" <Lora.Weems at ssa.gov>

To: "'sca-cooks at ansteorra.org'" <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>

Date: Thu, 6 Dec 2001 11:14:57 -0600

Subject: [Sca-cooks] RE: substitute for blood

You can use blood sausages (Blutwurst) as a blood substitute,

although sometimes those are just as hard to come by.

And what about the blood that comes >with< liver? you know,

in the plastic cups of chicken liver, or the containers of

pork/lamb/calf liver at the grocery store?

Or should you use species-specific blood, f'rinstance beef blood

for beef recipes?

Leofwynn

Date: Mon, 09 Aug 2004 10:36:53 -0700

From: Susan Fox-Davis <selene at earthlink.net>

Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Cooking with blood?

To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>

> I am curious as to how to cook with blood. I am researching a Greek

> dish called melas zomos, black broth also known as blood soup. All I

> have been able to uncover is the ingredients, pork cooked in it's own

> blood and seasoned with salt and vinegar. What precautions do I need

> to take, in what proportions to I mix the ingredients, and is there

> any ingredients that seem to be missing? Any leads into this mystery

> will be helpful.

> Nakos

> "kaythiarain" <kaythiarain at yahoo.com>

Some interesting correspondence may be found at:

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Notes & Queries

http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/1/7/0/11707/11707-h/11707-h.htm

A perusal of "greek black broth recipe" seems to imply that the stuff

was nutritious but horrible and nobody has had any really good reason to

redact a recipe. I do find pork blood in Chinese and Korean grocery

stores. This really does sound revolting, this coming from someone who

actually does like black pudding too.

Selene Colfox

selene at earthlink.net

Date: Mon, 9 Aug 2004 10:57:44 -0700 (PDT)

From: Christiane <christianetrue at earthlink.net>

Subject: [Sca-cooks] Re: black broth

To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org

I am curious as to how to cook with blood. I am researching a Greek dish called melas zomos, black broth also known as blood soup. All I have been able to uncover is the ingredients, pork cooked in it's own blood and seasoned with salt and vinegar. What precautions do I need to take, in what proportions to I mix the ingredients, and is there any ingredients that seem to be missing? Any leads into this mystery will be helpful.

Nakos

"kaythiarain" <kaythiarain at yahoo.com>

=================================================

And I thought I was nuts to want to recreate Florence's cibreo!

At least cibreo has been a celebrated dish (Caterina de' Medici adored

it). The joke about melas zomos in ancient times was that the Spartans

would rather die than endure a lifetime of eating this soup. It must

taste pretty damn bad; peasants are too practical to give up something

nutritious. I can find several recipes for cibreo, but no one has

bothered to even try to preserve at least a variation of melas zomos.

Gianotta

Date: Mon, 9 Aug 2004 14:03:09 -0400

From: "Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius"

<adamantius.magister at verizon.net>

Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Cooking with blood?

To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>

> I am curious as to how to cook with blood. I am researching a Greek

> dish called melas zomos, black broth also known as blood soup. All I

> have been able to uncover is the ingredients, pork cooked in it's

> own blood and seasoned with salt and vinegar. What precautions do I

> need to take, in what proportions to I mix the ingredients, and is

> there any ingredients that seem to be missing? Any leads into this

> mystery will be helpful.

> Nakos

> "kaythiarain" <kaythiarain at yahoo.com>

You might check here:

http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD/Blood-Soup-art.html

The link is to an article in Stefan's Florilegium on the making of a

Polish [I think] blood soup. It seems more complicated than the

description of the Greek dish mentioned above, but it needs to be

borne in mind that this isn't merely Greek food, it's Spartan food.

"With a name like Fluckers, you know it's got to be really great

blood soup!"

Also, while the ingredients in the Spartan version appear to be a lot

simpler, the rules for cooking with blood are more or less universal:

mixing with some vinegar appears to be extremely common in many blood

usages (to discourage clotting), and you don't want it to boil hard,

or it'll curdle into a mess I can only describe as nicely seasoned

scabs and plasma.

It seems to me what you'd do is cut up and simmer your meat in water

or possibly wine, until you have a rich broth with meat in it, then

add your blood-and-vinegar-mixture (seems like a proportion,

generally, of four parts blood to one part vinegar or thereabouts)

off the heat, place back on the heat and stir until the mixture

thickens slightly, but doesn't boil. Basically like thickening with

egg yolks. Id sneak in a little chopped marjoram and some pepper,

along with my salt, but then I'm not a Spartan.

Adamantius, who likes a good blood sausage but finds soups like this

a little too rich...

Date: Mon, 09 Aug 2004 14:11:54 -0400

From: Johnna Holloway <johnna at sitka.engin.umich.edu>

Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Cooking with blood?

To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>

http://www.foodsubs.com/MeatcureSausage.html talks about

the blood sausages so one can identify which include blood.

Asian markets are said to carry it in cans, so I presume that

going through the manufacturing process takes care of some of

the concerns about raw blood products.

I found one long Ag or USDA paper

the file http://www.fftc.agnet.org/library/data/eb/eb515/eb515.pdf.

that addressed the use of blood products in foods.

It's too long to copy so read it there or download it.

There's been some concerns regarding the use of blood as regards

BSE or mad cow.

the file http://www.fftc.agnet.org/library/data/eb/eb515/eb515.pdf.

One can search this using the terms USDA and blood sausages or

puddings and turn up more of these sorts of papers.

Johnnae llyn Lewis

Date: Mon, 9 Aug 2004 13:41:40 -0500

From: "ysabeau" <ysabeau at mail.ev1.net>

Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Cooking with blood?

To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>

My father and my grandmother used to make a Polish blood soup. It

was made with either chicken or duck blood. I wish I'd paid more

attention to how they did it. I just know that it was important

that the blood be as fresh as possible. My main memory of it was

my father cutting off the heads of the chickens (and maybe a duck)

and watching them run around headless while I screamed. I had to

opportunity to try it again as an adult on a visit to Poland and

didn't like it then either. I remember the soup being very salty

with that iron tinge and not very good. It didn't look appetizing

either with shades grey to black mixed with noodles. I'd ask them,

but they both died last year and I guess the family recipe went

with them...but I honestly don't think THAT recipe was a big loss.

I don't know if that would help with your greek blood soup recipe

or not...maybe you can contact a butcher to get the pork blood.

Ysabeau

Date: Sun, 05 Aug 2007 20:59:44 -0400

From: Suey <lordhunt at gmail.com>

Subject: [Sca-cooks] Pantry products - Morcilla

To: sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org

Phil Troy wrote:

". . . my wife and I discovered yesterday that the local South American

bakery . . .We went in and pointed at objects that looked interesting. .

.the most terrifying thing was the morcilla, which is a blood sausage,

here made with rice, pork -- meat and blood, that is, and seasoned,

apparently with cloves. . ."

Wait a minute here! In Spain I sacrifice five pigs every year at the

end of January instead of San Martin as the climate is warmer. A family

comes from Monroy en Estremadura to do that but I am there to watch

every killing. I do not participate in the blood part as it is an art.

When the dagger severs the pig's heart the slaughterer's mother and his

wife alternate holding buckets to catch the spray of the blood which

spouts out of the aorta. When a bucket contains enough blood she takes a

stick and beats it for a time while the other woman replaces her

catching more blood. The first then she takes a new bucket and replaces

the other women to catch more blood until no more blood comes out. This

beating process is necessary to prevent the blood from coagulating

unlike that of a sheep.

When our sheep are slaughtered in southern Chile traditionally we

use is the same process as in Monroy, Spain all of which date back to

the Middle Ages. We put a pan under the sheep's neck as the slaughter

slits the neck. Mind you the art of killing is that with as little pain

possible and hitting the right parts to make it super fast.

In that of the pig, I find morcilla making an art. First for the

difficulty of the blood and then because we have individual recipes in

each household. I don't like blood sausage from Burgos made with rice. I

like that of Leon with onion. I have never had cloves in my morcilla.We

use black pepper, mace etc. not cayenne because I do not admit new world

products or techniques.

For me our "sacrifice of our pigs" is not disgusting. It is

traditionally the survival of the fittest, our way of being able to eat

during winter months - it is his life or mine which at times can be is

scary. One year a friend sent me some of black hooves that had mated

and had produced from Huelva - the most delicious porkys in Spain. My

slaughter man said he was afraid. Parent animals are much more dangerous

than those that have not mated. He continued that any of them could

escape and bite off the calf of his leg as the biggest weighed over a

ton. The calf of his leg is three times bigger than my thigh!

A female escaped, I don't know how I scrabbled up the to the roof

of our barbecue area where we do the slaughtering. The pig knocked down

one of our strongest wire fences and ran to the river. Finally our men

lassoed her on the bank and furiously brought her back to the

slaughtering table. I stayed on the roof until she was dead I was so

scared.

On my pantry list I cautiously wrote "pork products" because I

personally participate in the preparation of all others during the

slaughter. Its a back breaking two day project after which we celebrate

with 250 guests on the third day who I receive with dishpan hands filled

with knife cuts and pin pricks. Yes, I like my chorizo and all that but

for me the best is the morcilla for it lasts only a short time and is

made with such loving hands. Morcilla is caviar for me.

Suey